Investigation from the Inside

Flash Backs and Justice

Can I just start by saying FLASHBACKS SUCK! Have recently read another excellent post by Saving Shards and gosh…I know I have said it before but as much as we are all different….we are the same.

I have had many flashbacks in the last few weeks. I guess the complete and utter despair of my father’s illness and death, is waning just enough for some of these….well…shitty times…to sneak into my main memory.

I will not bore you all with the details, but I guess my question to the ether is how do we control our minds? I have for the most part, taken a break from all the self-help gurus, maybe its time to re-visit. The thing is…when searching for a solution, I find it tends to dredge up all the badness of DD and the crisis that followed. The more I read, the angrier I get….about the harm, the forced change in my thoughts and memories…..the change in me. I have been knocked off the path I thought I was on, and I am just trying to make sense of whether this has made me better and stronger or more bitter and jaded? The unfairness of it all is weighing me down and again my mind turns to revenge and how the parties involved get to walk away unscathed (but do they)? Not being able to bear witness to the “others” pain has me stumped. I want to honestly do harm to those women who insinuated themselves in my life…its unbecoming but its there all the time.

There are not only flash back moments, recently, I have discovered there are other losses as well….losses that occurred because my focus was taken away from my life and thrown down on trying to navigate betrayal. When I speak of loss (other than the obvious loss of my innocence and trust) I mean loss of opportunity, loss of ground with work and outside relationships….things that did not get taken care of because I was so torn away from my world in an instant, basically loss of time….spent in crisis…that I did not sign up for. There is loss of my dignity, loss of ability to make informed choices about my life…just everywhere I look, I see it.

I am currently in a pretty selfish place, hate it, but here is where I am. I am just so mad, about what H’s decisions have cost me. I’m angry with no place to put it, so it resides inside me. I know I am supposed to find this “forgiveness” frame of mind but god help me it has been elusive. I can play nice, and spend time, but my ability to really love, with abandon, to initiate affections, to be the woman who was so in love with her husband, that ability is either gone or so buried under crap I can’t reach it and I don’t know what to do. I have in the past, six months, spoken to a therapist who told me that this is how I feel, there are some feelings that can’t be fixed and I likely should leave my marriage. I also feel guilty (and here is the crazy part) that I am depriving my H of love. He shat on our life and me, and I feel guilty!

I keep reading all these blogs about people who survive this, marriages that are made stronger after infidelity and I wonder if I am just a failure at this, am doing something wrong? My H will never bring it up and for some reason I feel frozen to. Rather than dredge it up, I hide my thoughts and feelings. What the F is wrong with me? HELP, I’m failing this week. Not sure if quitting smoking is adding to my stress…probably but fuck me….these feelings have never left me since DD. Must read….must work….get back to you all if I find any answers….

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4 thoughts on “Flash Backs and Justice”

You are not failing, while others in your situation are healing and “have a better marriage than before”.
Based on my personal and professional experience, I have seen the following:

1) People who had (have) a worldview that (was) is based on the premises that people are inherently good (see Carl Rogers) and who have strong values when it comes to loyalty and trust, are not doing well when their own partner commits adultery. It destroys all they believed in and it causes cognitive dissonance that can only be solved if one changes their worldview based, on the observation that the evidence is inconsistent with their experiences.
Those who commit adultery are not “temporarily” insane, there are attributes in their personality that can be spotted even before they commit the act of the ultimate betrayal. It is hard to accept this in a person you share your bed with.
And “yes” you are correct, there are many losses…(collateral damage…affecting you).

2) Partners who themselves also have committed different types of disloyalty, e.g. lying about money, who they meet and who they are friends with on social media and how far this so-called friendship goes, do not have this inner struggle and are more likely to accept and forgive. After all, they recognise their own deceptions and both can do better when the willingness is there to have a better marriage/relationship. They also tend to do better after separation/divorce.

3) People who have a strong believe (Christianity or other) also seem to be protected from the lifelong struggle of doing it themselves; the clawing themselves out of the deep hole they found themselves in after D-day. They found support and guidance in God’s word.

In summary: If you perceive yourself a #1, you are a good person who was trusting and who now feels lost…Accepting the lack of respect and cruel behaviour of a spouse is nearly unfathomable.
Accepting that the third person, who went after your spouse, while knowing that you existed as well as your children, is getting away with “murder” is 100% inconsistent with your sense of justice and your worldview of being responsible for your own actions….Trusting that Karma takes care of it is not enough.

I get it and many others do. The internet messages and the commercial web-sites preaching healing and forgiveness after adultery are one-sided. Reality is way more complicated.

Thank you E for taking the idea of failing off my plate, what you say does make a great deal of sense to me. I am in the first category, and I do realize that I should be letting Karma do its work. I had a long and tearful conversation with H again two days ago. It was good to get it off my chest but truthfully I am still not further ahead on the sickness in the pit of my stomach and its been a year. I guess more time is needed and we will be heading back to Therapy in a few weeks time. My honest worry is that I will never get beyond this stage….

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